By TERRY MATTINGLY, Scripps Howard News Service

Most editors and reporters would panic, or call their lawyers, if news executives asked religious questions during job interviews.Yet it's hard to probe the contents of a journalist's head without asking big questions. And it's hard to ask some of the ultimate questions -- questions about birth, life, suffering, pain and death -- without mentioning religion.

It would be hard to pick a more symbolic moment to join the church than during an Easter Vigil Mass -- the high point of the ancient Christian calendar.

There is nothing new about Anglicans worrying about the environment.

When it comes to religion and politics, it's hard to talk about the contests without naming the players and their teams.Consider Hillary Rodham Clinton, who insists that her political convictions are rooted in her United Methodist faith. Then there is Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ. Enough said.

The young pope was friendly, but blunt, as he faced the 240 college leaders from across the nation who gathered at Catholic University to hear his thoughts on faith and academic freedom.

Faithful fans of ESPN's "Mike & Mike in the Morning" know that former NFL lineman Mike Golic takes great pleasure in skewering his urbane shrimp of a partner, Mike Greenberg.

The first time Jay Swartzendruber held a compact disc, he wondered if music fans would miss the artwork, readable lyrics and other goodies that came inside old-fashioned album covers.

Any list of great cities in the ancient Mediterranean World would have to include Rome, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch and Corinth, or some other crucial crossroads near what would become Constantinople.Thus, these cities became the five patriarchal sees of Christianity in the first millennium.

The last successful prosecution under Britain's blasphemy law was in 1977, when the publisher of the Gay News was fined for printing a love poem from a Roman centurion to Jesus.In the most recent clash the nation's high court waved off an attempt by evangelicals to attack "Jerry Springer -- The Opera."

Journalist Pamela Druckerman didn't think it would be hard to discuss sex issues with Alain Giami of the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research. After all, he was one of the top sex researchers in a nation known for its freewheeling, laissez faire attitudes about matters of the heart.However, Giami silenced her when she used a dangerous word.